Caveat: this post is a mental exercise, trying to work out my thinking.
First a quote from Roger Scruton:
“There is also the division that separates merely conscious creatures from self-conscious creatures like us. Only the second have a genuine ‘first-person’ perspective, from which to distinguish how things seem to me from how they seem to you. The creature with “I” thoughts has an ability to relate to his kind in a way that sets him apart from the rest of nature, and many thinkers (Kant and Hegel preeminently) believe that it is this fact, not the face of consciousness per se, that creates or reveals the central mysteries of the human condition. Although dogs are conscious, they do not reflect on their own consciousness as we do: they live, as Schopenhauer put it, in ‘a world of perception,’ their thoughts and desires turned outward to the perceivable world.”
Roger Scruton, “Confronting Biology,” in Philosophical Psychology: Psychology, Emotions, and Freedom, edited by Craig Steven Titus (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University Press, 2009), 90.
Reading the phrase “relate to his kind” stimulated me to think about how we relate to our kind. As Scruton says, I have “‘I’ thoughts”; I’m not merely conscious, but also self-conscious. But awareness of my “I” thoughts leads me to understand others “I” thoughts. It leads me to be aware of the fact of a sort of intentionality that is only possible for a self-conscious person. I must be aware of myself and my conscious aims for becoming to be able to intend in the fullest sense.
This cluster of ideas led in a hard-to-specify way to a realization that the sort of art I appreciate is human art (isn’t all art?). What I mean is this, I enjoy art to the extent that I can perceive alongside the artist, and especially when the objects perceived are humans. It is this struggle with self-consciousness and for the the rightness of self-conscious aims that so fascinates me about the human condition. And art that captures this struggle captures my imagination. As an example of what I mean, I am posting below a sampling of my recent and favorite Facebook “Cover Photos.”
Edward Hopper’s Room in New York
Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of Horatii
Hendrick ter Brugghe’s The Supper at Emmaus
Léon-Ernest Drivier’s La Joie de Vivre (The Joy of Life)
